This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Time and again, the passion for understanding has led to the illusion that man is able to comprehend the objective world rationally, by pure thought, without any empirical foundations - in short, by metaphysics.
Illusion | Man | Metaphysics | Passion | Thought | Time | Understanding | World |
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |
The monks have no sadness. They wage war on the devil as though they were performing a dance.
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
Anger is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Its absence means indifference - the most disastrous of all human failings.
Absence | Anger | Indifference | Inevitable | Means |
George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.
War |
The ruling passion, being what it will... The ruling passion conquers reason still.
Pāli Canon or Tipitaka or Pāli Tipitaka
Just as rain breaks not through a well-thatched house, passion breaks not through a well-guarded mind.
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede
When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.